


In the Coolness of Your Shadow

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extra Treat, F/M, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27244954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: After Malachor, Ahsoka becomes a prisoner of the Empire.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano/Darth Vader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	In the Coolness of Your Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badritual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/gifts).



Ahsoka expected her time as an Imperial prisoner to be brief and painful. As soon as she woke inside Vader's transport, her hands and feet numb from the tight bindings, with Malachor only a bad dream behind them, she'd made peace with her fate. A foul gag covered her mouth and robbed her of any last chance of reaching through the black-clad monster to pull out some remaining ember of Anakin. The Empire would interrogate and kill her, and the creature who had once been her beloved Master would stand aside and allow it, might even give the order himself. She'd lost him utterly.

Kanan and Ezra had escaped alive. That must suffice her for one small, last victory.

They docked with a huge Star Destroyer. The cell they threw her into held the level of comfort she would expect from the Empire. The walls were gray, metal, unyielding. The bunk was built of a thin foam over a hard surface, also gray. Harsh lights shone from overhead at all hours. She was given food at regular intervals, not what she liked but tailored to her dietary needs. She considered rejecting the meals but she doubted she would live long enough to starve.

Her doubts changed, as time went on.

They did interrogate her, under the cold, pitiless red eye of an ITO droid. She told them nothing. In between sessions, she sat in her cell, meditating and seeking calmness from the Force, praying her friends already believed her dead and weren't steeped in worry or planning some futile attack in an attempt to free her. Her thoughts turned to Anakin over and over, picking apart her questions of what had become of him, wondering how had he contorted into Vader's dire form. The Force held no answers, and little comfort.

She expected swift death but days became weeks, then months. She lost count of her time here, still imprisoned, still kept alive. The interrogations ceased and only after they were finished did she note their absence. Time became mutable, like marshy land under her toes. She spent more and more hours inside her own mind. The stories she'd been taught as a girl said some Jedi had passed into the Force this way, becoming one with their own souls and vanishing into mists. But she was no Jedi.

The lonesome stupor of her hours clanged into awareness one day as alarms blared and stormtroopers pelted past her cell. She couldn't ask why, couldn't even see them. She heard the thud of their boots and the urgency of the klaxon. Something had changed.

She hoped with a soft, mad wish that the Rebellion had engaged with this Star Destroyer and would send it into a fireball of holy vengeance in the names of all those wronged by the Emperor.

The ship remained. When her food was brought next, and followed by her one permitted visit to the refresher per day, she remembered how to speak. It had been months, perhaps years. Six stormtroopers always guarded her along her short walk, and one always accompanied her in here. Today's guard was a woman.

"Were we attacked?" Her own voice cracked and gritted, too long dry from disuse.

At first she thought her captor wouldn't speak. Then, "No. There was trouble with some of the traitors."

"I see," she said although she didn't. Now that she had spoken, she found she longed for conversation even from someone with orders to shoot her for looking in the wrong direction. "It's been dealt with?"

"Of course. No one can stand against the new Emperor."

New?

Her life tilted. "Palpatine is dead?"

Her guard glared at her. "I'm no traitor. Long live Emperor Vader!". She shoved Ahsoka with the butt of her blaster rifle. Conversation over.

Vader was the Emperor? _Anakin_ was the Emperor?? The thought became her new focus. Anakin, who'd only wanted to be surrounded by people who loved him, now ground down the galaxy under his boot. And he'd left her alive.

Two days passed. On the third, she was ordered to bathe during her visit to the 'fresher. A different stormtrooper watched her, but gave her the courtesy of looking away. Back in her cell, a change of clothes had been left, clean and finely-made, to replace her worn, smelly garments. The cloth glimmered with a dozen shades of iridescent blacks and midnight purples. She nearly refused but knew there was no point. She dressed and she waited in the stiff, itchy dress. She hadn't seen a mirror in years but she suspected she looked quite nice. She couldn't remember how old she'd been the last time she'd worn a gown, and she'd never worn one as fine as this. Dark gems picked out glittering lines down the sleeves and up the bodice. She'd been given soft, black slippers for her feet.

Stormtroopers came for her several hours later, not with food but with an open door. She was escorted down new corridors, her dulled senses awakening with fresh input. Ahsoka watched everything around her as though it were the most fascinating view she'd ever seen. The gray walls of her cell and the dim corridor she'd been allowed to walk down once per day melted away in her memory under the brilliant colors of rank insignia, computer terminals, and the twinkling lights of droids meandering away, intent on their own tasks.

The 'troopers led her to a room with yet more guards lining the room. A table was laid out with overflowing dishes of foods she remembered from when she had choices about what she ate.

She was unsurprised when another door opened and Vader swept into the room. She watched him, wanting to drop her eyes and refusing to give in to the urge.

The old Ahsoka would have made a quip, something along the lines of how well Anakin had done for himself. The Ahsoka she was now had been mute too long, any witty lines long dead on her tongue. She stood in silence, wearing her clean clothes and no longer smelling of her own ground-in sweat, all the bruises from her interrogations long since faded away.

"Sit," he commanded, taking the seat at the head of the table.

A pleased tremor ran through her as she said, "I'd prefer to stand." She hadn't been sure until that moment that some last piece of herself remained.

"The food is for you. Sit and eat it."

"I'm not hungry."

She felt the weight of his glare through his red lenses. He waved a hand. Several of the guards moved from the wall. Instead of forcing the food into her, they gathered and removed all the dishes save one: her favorite, sweet-glazed hanaba. She hadn't tasted any in far longer than she'd been a prisoner.

"We have much to discuss," he said. "You may sit or you may stand."

Ahsoka gave in and took the chair opposite him. "You killed Palpatine?" It was a question. She couldn't picture it, even though her time with Anakin as this monstrous thing had been so short. She was sure he would cling to his new master for every scrap of attention for as long as he could.

"It is the way of the Sith. The Apprentice rises and casts down the Master."

A cold shiver moved through her. Her new black clothes constricted and scratched her skin. "I will not become your new apprentice."

"No. I already have chosen my new apprentice. He will join me, in time."

"Ezra won't join you, either."

Vader watched her for a deep, silent moment. "Ezra Bridger vanished long ago. You have been imprisoned for some time."

Someone else, then. Another Jedi? Or simply some poor Force Sensitive who'd caught Vader's eye? Once, there had been people Ahsoka could protect. She no longer had that power. She couldn't save the man Vader had identified as his apprentice. She allowed herself to release the task from her conscience.

The hanaba gleamed in its dish. Her stomach growled.

"My former Master sought immortality. He failed to find it. I prefer a more ordinary form of permanence. I will rule the galaxy and bend it to my wishes. My apprentice will carry on my legacy."

"Sounds like you've got this all figured out." It sounded like a typical Anakin plan: he knew the big strokes, and had no interest in pre-planning the little details that would be oh so important later.

"I will require a queen."

The words jolted her. At last, all her senses were awake after their long slumber, protected inside the cocoon of her own mind.

"I think you've missed an important job of a queen. You and I aren't the same species."

"Once my apprentice has joined us, I will have no need for another heir. Your Rebel friends will see you as their new Empress and know they too will bend under the will of the Empire. You will rule by my side, and the galaxy will tremble at our power." He leaned forward, as if confiding in her despite all these others standing by. "This is why I spared your life."

She felt the cold fury of him across from her, and his presence in the Force. To her horror, she also felt twisted affection rolling off him like an icy wave. He cared for this would-be apprentice of his, and he cared for her. He'd left her alive, ceased her torments, and held an important Rebel prisoner in the only safety he could give her. He had nearly killed her on Malachor, but he hadn't, because part of him still loved her.

"If I say no?"

"You may live out your days in your cell. No harm will come to you there."

The last spark of who she'd been said this was nothing, this was manipulation, a trick to get her to reveal her secrets. Another part of who she'd been whispered that Anakin's greatest weakness had always been through his heart. Occupying a space beside him would give her the position and the time to change his mind, to bend his will away from destruction. She loved him, too. She would do anything to have back the man she'd once known.

The person she was now felt hungry, and was weighed down with a bone-weary exhaustion. She pulled the dish of hanaba towards herself to spoon some onto her plate, and she knew before her meal was finished, she would say yes.


End file.
